1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vibrating gyroscope, and more particularly to a vibrating gyroscope used in a video camera or the like to detect external vibrations such as hand shaking by detecting a rotational angular velocity and cancel out the vibrations on the basis of the detected information.
2. Description of the Related Art
One type of vibrating gyroscope is disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 8-278145, which is described below with reference to FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 1, the vibrating gyroscope 1 comprises a vibrator 2 made of a rectangular shaped piezoelectric ceramic material, and two support members 3 having a circular columnar shape and being made of silicone-based resin material.
The vibrator 2 is fixed to a substrate 4 via the support members 3 in such a manner that one end face of each support member 3 is connected to a respective one of two nodes N which occur when the vibrator 2 vibrates and the other end face of each support member 2 is connected to the base plate 4.
Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 8-278145 further discloses that the support members 3 are also formed into a rectangular shape instead of the circular columnar shape.
The vibrating gyroscope according to the conventional technique has the following problems.
In the conventional vibrating gyroscope in which the vibrator is supported on the support members in the form of columns, the diameter of the columns should be large enough to stably support the vibrator. However, the large diameter of the columns can cause the vibration of the vibrator to leak to the substrate through the support members. As a result, a reduction occurs in the amplitude of the vibration of the vibrator. The magnitude of a signal detected by the vibrating gyroscope varies in proportion to the amplitude of the vibrator, and thus the magnitude of the detected signal decreases with the reduction in the amplitude of the vibration of the vibrator. Therefore, the vibrating gyroscope of such a type has a rather low sensitivity.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to solve the above problems. More specifically, it is an object of the present invention to provide a vibrating gyroscope in which a vibrator is supported in a stable fashion without causing a significant reduction in the sensitivity thereby achieving a high sensitivity.